How to create and remember your unique and strong passwords
Using the same password for multiple accounts is not just a bad idea, it is a security risk for you and everyone you have in contact.
Do you know someone who uses one of these top 10 worst passwords?
- 123456
- password
- 123456789
- 111111
- qwerty
- admin
- abc123
- !@#$%^&*
- password1
- qwerty123
Source: Wikipedia
Top details that are brute-forced on our sites:
- admin
- [login]
- nimda
- user
- test
- badmin
Each site and account needs to have an unique passwords that is hard to guess by the wrong people and easy to use by the right people, easy for you to remember and type but hard for others to guess and harder for malicious programs to figure out, but how can we keep track of all this?
Modern technology is making it easier to secure your accounts and these best practices can be for enterprise corporate institutions and individuals.
Unique Passwords
It goes without saying that you should have an unique password for each account you create, but remembering this can sometimes be nearly impossible.
This is how you can pick an unique password for your account? This is how
Seeing it as a password makes it harder to create and remember, but what if it is phrases that only you know and could think of? This is the ultimate goal of this guide.
Let’s start with the things you should NOT use.
Number 1: Your Name
Using your name is your password is number one on our list, even know it could be one of the first things people think of, it is still widely used.
Number 2: Any public knowable name
This includes your mother’s name, any relative, even your pet, especially if you posted it online on a Social Media platform.
Number 3: Birthdays
This is the worst one among bank pins and in combination with name+birthday is also very common
Number 4: Anything on our top terrible password list above
In the post introduction we have 16 items that should never be used as a password
How to create and store Unique passwords
Edward Snowden said: “First of all, stop thinking of it as a password, instead see it as a pass PHRASE “
Option 1: Create a passphrase template
Creating a template that only you know how it works. It is rather simple.
Let’s say you created a new account on example.com with your email john.doe@provider.com, you can generate a password for your account that is easier to remember by creating a template.
Example: (first 3 letters of the website)+(your email provider)+(the date you created the account)+(@)
This would end up looking like: ExaProvider2018@
This password is easier to remember because you know how it was assembled
Option 2: Using a password generator
If you have something to store your passwords in, then you don’t have to worry about the complexity of the password or if you are a person that retypes your password a lot up to the point of forever memory, then password generators could be very useful.
In the screenshot you can see that the passphrase eZmG6V is rather unique and difficult to guess for humans AND software, the site even displays a method on how to remember the passphrase.
egg ZIP music GOLF 6 VISA = eZmG6V
This password generator is located at PasswordGenerator.net and is very customizable.
Storing your passwords
Putting all your eggs in one basket is a terrible idea, when you do make sure to use a proper baskets or you will lose all your eggs if something were to happen.
LastPass
LastPass is a secure password storing program, it has a free and a paid version.
How it works:
To store website passwords you only need to install the LastPass Extension/Addon on your browser and it will suggest to save your passwords for you and it can even generate passwords, one-time pins/passwords and two factor authentication.
You can also get the app on your Android, IOS and Windows phone device to save passwords for apps if you purchased the premium package.
Here is the packages compared:
Summary
Creating Passphrases instead of passwords make it easier to remember and maintain.
Using a template to create passwords helps
Storing your passwords somewhere secure is easy
As a bonus, check this video on how secure your online accounts